Book excerpt: Contains twenty-nine papers. Twenty-five were presented at the International Conference on Historical Dialectology (Regional and Social) held at Blazejewko, Poland (May,1986). Papers deal with various aspects of historical regional dialectology. Some border on the issue of dialectology and linguistic change. Although most deal with English, a number discuss more general issues such as Bartoli's norms, the role of the center and periphery in dialect distribution with reference to the adoption, diffusion and spread of linguistic change, the naturalness problems, the problem of convergence, the use of the computer in historical dialectology. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR